Wilderness to Water. Reflections regarding God's faithfulness, character, love, and the gospel of Jesus Christ. An examination of God's grace and power through meditative prose, poetry, original drawings and full-color photographs.

The week before Easter my wife and I visited (online) a mainline denominational church service and listened to a sermon that was patently indecipherable….empty, obtuse, and pretentious.

Maharishi Mahesh YogiJohn Lennon

The sermon represented some sort of bizarre hybrid cross between the philosophies of Oprah Winfrey, Deepak Chopra, John Lennon, and Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. It was an oblique, pluralistic blend of eastern mysticism, pop-psychology, high-sounding ‘transcendentalisms’ and existentialist rigamarole , all delivered with an air of smug superiority and Self-perceived profundity. It was, in essence, a rudderless, philosophical treatise of evasive, half-baked gnostic notions set hopelessly adrift into a fog bank of high-sounding verbiage.

The few times in the sermon when the Bible was mentioned, it was always presented as some vague “metaphor”, a book that ivory-towered scholars and cloistered higher critics had,…. after much painstaking deconstructionist dissecting …. finally been able to completely dismember and dispose of. The sermon was the type of thing that one might expect to hear at a high-dollar, “new age” spiritual retreat for wealthy and jaded sophisticates in the Berkshires of western Massachusetts or, perhaps, at an expensive, northern California, self-improvement get-a-way sandwiched somewhere in between a sweat lodge drumming session and an esoteric seminar on how to activate one’s dormant kundalini chakra centers on the way to personal “cosmic consciousness”.

Needless to say, the sermon was excruciatingly painful to listen to and endure. But that is where we are today. The bride, in far too many cases, has gone a-whoring.

“Hear the word of the Lord, O house of Jacob, and all the families of the house of Israel. Thus says the Lord,

‘What injustice did your fathers find in Me,
That they went far from Me
And walked after emptiness and became empty?’ “—Jeremiah 2:4-5

Lord, come quickly!

It’s a Tarpit for the Children
(It’s a Maze of Shifting Sand)

Have you heard the latest “good news”
From where Babble-Towers grow?
Where high-rising deconstruction
Is uplifting from below?

It’s where Wishy married Washy
And the two begat a Mess…
It’s where disarray’s a virtue,
Dark and darker coalesce.

It’s where Vague is now to die for,
And true Meaning’s turned away…
Where the norm is Mass Confusion,
Where Delusion lives today.

It’s where Order’s on hiatus,
It’s where Logic’s lost at sea…
It’s where demons lie in waiting,
It’s where Gook meets Gobbledy.

It’s where Gibberish is honored,
And Proud Jabber walks around…
It’s where Mumbo kisses Jumbo
Where there is no solid ground.

It’s a tarpit for the children,
It’s a maze of shifting sand …
Where derangement’s now promoted,
And the flames of hell are fanned.

It’s where lunacy’s in fashion,
It’s where fashion’s found a home,
It’s where shrugs pass for assurance….
Indecision for Shalom.

It’s where Reason’s called in question,
And where questions never end,
It’s where answers can’t be final,
And “God’s Word”…of course…offends.

Lord, have mercy, please upon us,
Give us Grace to see the Light…
Please reveal true Truth and reason,
Turn these wrong thoughts into Right.

May we tremble in your Presence…
Holy, Holy, Holy One.
Wash us in the Blood of Jesus,
Father, help us see the Son!

Grant us, please, Lord, true Repentance,
Help us seek the true I AM…
Take us to the Cross of Calv’ry,
There to bow before The Lamb

“That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched—this we proclaim concerning the Word of life. The life appeared; we have seen it and testify to it, and we proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and has appeared to us. We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that you also may have fellowship with us. And our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ.”—1John
1:1-3

“Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”— John 14:6